What Cloud Storage Actually Costs

Cloud storage is sold in plans, which makes it almost impossible to compare. One provider offers 2TB for $9.99 a month, another 6TB for $129.99 a year, a third 200GB for $2.99. Those numbers do not sit next to each other usefully.

So here they are converted to the same unit — dollars per terabyte per year — which is the comparison nobody publishes and which changes the ranking considerably.

The per-terabyte table

All prices from each provider's own pages, checked 31 August 2026, with annual figures derived from published monthly rates where only monthly was shown. Google's Google One prices rendered as placeholders rather than figures on the page we checked, so they are not included.

What the arithmetic exposes

Microsoft 365 Family is an outlier

About $21.67 per terabyte per year — roughly a third of what Dropbox and Apple charge — and the Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook licences are included rather than extra.

That is not Microsoft being generous. It is Microsoft not selling storage: the subscription is an applications product, and 6TB is thrown in to make it harder to leave. The effect for a buyer is the same either way.

The catch is that it is 1TB per person across up to six people, not 6TB for one person. If you personally need 3TB, this plan does not do that, and it is the most common misreading of the offer.

Small tiers are expensive per terabyte and still correct

iCloud+ 50GB works out at around $238 per terabyte per year — the worst ratio in the table by a wide margin.

It is also, for a great many people, the right purchase. Per-terabyte pricing is only meaningful if you will use the terabytes. Paying $11.88 a year for storage you fill is better value than paying $119.88 for storage that sits 90 percent empty, whatever the ratio says.

Which is why the sizing question matters more than the price question — worked through here.

Dropbox is priced for something other than capacity

At about $60 per terabyte per year, Dropbox Plus is roughly three times Microsoft's rate and identical to Apple's while including no applications.

What you are paying for is sync reliability, which is a real product and the thing Dropbox has optimised hardest for. Whether it is worth a threefold premium depends entirely on whether bad sync currently costs you time you can name.

The lifetime option, and when it wins

pCloud is the only mainstream provider selling storage outright:

The 2TB comparison is the clean one. Dropbox Plus or iCloud+ 2TB costs about $120 a year, so pCloud's $399 pays for itself a little past three years and is free thereafter — roughly $800 saved over a decade.

The risk is not hidden and should not be minimised: "lifetime" is the company's lifetime. You are making a ten-to-twenty-year bet on a business surviving. That makes pCloud a good second copy and a poor only copy.

Business plans, and why they look terrible

Five people on Dropbox Standard is $900 a year for a team allocation starting at 3TB. Microsoft 365 Family is $129.99 for up to 6TB. On capacity, team plans are indefensible.

They are not sold on capacity. What $15 a user buys is central revocation when someone leaves, company ownership of the files, admin visibility over who can see what, and longer recovery windows. A consumer plan shared among staff has none of those, which is fine until the day it is not.

Note the three-person minimum on Advanced — a two-person business wanting those features buys three seats.

The line item everyone forgets

Every plan above is storage, and none of them is a backup. Sync propagates deletion, so a file removed on your laptop is removed in the cloud.

Backblaze Computer Backup is $99 a year per computer for unlimited data backup, with a free trial. Unlimited makes the per-terabyte comparison meaningless in the best way — a library that grows every year never triggers an upgrade.

It is not a cheaper alternative to the plans above. It is a different product that most people need in addition, and the distinction is worth ten minutes: cloud storage vs backup.

Monthly or annual

Where a discount exists, take it. Microsoft 365 Personal is $99.99 a year against $9.99 a month — about $20 saved. Family is $129.99 against $12.99 a month, saving roughly $26.

Dropbox displayed identical monthly and annual rates on the page we checked, which means monthly billing costs nothing extra and leaves you free to change your mind. Where that is the case, there is no reason to commit.

What to actually budget

• Documents only: $0. A free Google account covers it.
• One person with photos: $12–36 a year. iCloud+ 50GB or 200GB.
• A household: $129.99 a year. Microsoft 365 Family, up to 6TB and the Office apps.
• Heavy video or archives: ~$120 a year for 2TB, or $399 once for pCloud lifetime.
• A small business needing admin control: $15 a user a month, and be clear you are buying control rather than capacity.
• Anyone with irreplaceable files: add $99 a year per machine for a real backup.

Before committing to any of it, measure what you actually use — most people are at a fraction of what they pay for. And if you are leaving a provider over these numbers, the destinations are in Dropbox alternatives.